The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart.

Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What it's been through. And I was just... Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks.

If two people could make each other smile and laugh and forget all the pain and darkness in the world for a moment, why should we feel ashamed of it?

I'm not over you. I dream about you every night. I watch that fucking video over and over just to hear your voice. Does that make you happy? Is that proof I cared?

If you think you can stand looking and not touching for eight months, you're welcome to try.""Try' being the operative word," he said, sighing. "No, I can't. And I don't want to try.

He embraced me, and said into my ear, 'I'm going to fuck the shit out of you.' I lost my breath.It was crude, it was unexpected, and it set me on fucking fire.

But he just stared at my eyes, as if searching for a stray eyelash. A free wish.

Maybe we needed to break a little, so we could put ourselves back together more beautifully than before.

If I die, that's what they'll find in me. This face, inked in the surface of every cell.